


Blood and Inspiration

by CatLovePower



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Caring Geralt, Gen, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt/Comfort, I Blame Tumblr, One Shot, Sharing a Bed, Whump, but in a gruff way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22339531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatLovePower/pseuds/CatLovePower
Summary: "I have inspiration.""You have a stab wound."orGeralt and Jaskier spend the night tending to injuries and discussing music.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 29
Kudos: 351





	Blood and Inspiration

It was really late, and Jaskier was drunk and singing poorly composed songs about monsters, scared people and backward ways – Geralt was wondering how long it would take for the people he sang about to realize that he was criticizing them; how long until tempers soared and fists flew.

As the night went on, he wasn’t really listening anymore. He kept to himself in his dark corner, nursing the same ale for a while, thinking about the next town, the next hunt, when he heard a shout. He raised his head and took in the scene before him. Angry people stomping about, the flash of a blade, broken glass on the floor, and the unmistakable scent of blood in the air. Time to go, he thought.

His bard was, surprisingly, not at the center of the commotion – two large men engaged in a fistfight over some insult. He sat unsteadily on a bar stool, looking puzzled and disheveled. He blinked when he saw Geralt, his blue eyes lighting up.

“I have inspiration,” he claimed, raising a bloody hand.

“You have a stab wound,” Geralt growled, keeping his voice low and his eyes on the ongoing fight.

“I do?”

“You’re bleeding. Let’s go.” He gestured toward the back door, hoping to slip out without further aggravation.

“Gosh, Geralt, I am bleeding _out_ ,” he exclaimed, when he finally realized what had happened.

That was an exaggeration but Geralt didn’t comment. He maneuvered the flailing bard into the back alley and hoped they weren’t followed, despite his wounded burden yapping away, too loudly for a dying man. That, he told him.

“Well excuse me for not being one to suffer in silence with nothing but manly grunts. I won’t be silenced by a flesh wound – it _is_ a flesh wound, right? I’ll have you know that I didn’t start the fight, I merely made astute physical observations that weren’t well received and…”

He paused when he stumbled and tried to steady himself on the wall, but Geralt pulled on his arm, the one that wasn’t pressing on his midsection, urging him not to stop. He looked frightened in the half light, but his silence was very short-lived, as he launched into another tirade right away, “I’m way too young to die in a dirty alley in the middle of nowhere, and…”

How old was he anyway, Geralt wondered. He had the attention span of a six-year old, was horny like a teenager most of the time, but sometimes, there was wisdom behind his words that belonged to a man who has been living for way longer than that.

Jaskier had become quieter and heavier by his side as the blood loss began to take its toll – that, or all the terrible alcohol he drank earlier that night.

He needed help – stitches and salves and rest – and yet he kept muttering about his muse, and how he needed to write it all down because the pain was “exquisite”. It made no sense to Geralt, how someone could see beauty in bleeding into the night after a bar brawl. There was nothing pretty in getting injured, and suffering was just that – dark and terrifying.

But he grunted words of encouragement as he hoisted up the bard, who was tripping over his own feet now. This was going nowhere, he thought, so he swept him over his shoulder as if he weighed nothing.

“Your arse looks great from there,” Jaskier commented, his voice airy.

“You’re delirious,” Geralt snorted.

The chatter died down to a quiet hush as the bard bled and Geralt trod to safety.

*

The good thing about being scaringly tall and dangerous looking was that the innkeeper didn’t question Geralt arriving in the dead of night, carrying a bleeding man wearing gaudy clothes who kept mumbling about muses and pain. Or maybe it was something that happened regularly around here, which was saying a lot about the place.

Geralt managed to get the door open in the dark without dropping Jaskier. Then he sat him on the edge of the bed and tried to take his jacket off to see if they needed to find a healer or if he could deal with it himself.

“At least buy me dinner first,” Jaskier joked, trying to push his hands away.

“Hmm.”

“What are you hmm-ing for, as you undress me like a fair maiden?”

If Geralt didn’t suspect a head injury, he did now, because Jaskier was making little sense. He tentatively felt the back of his head, and there it was, a bump and a cut, no longer bleeding.

“Feels nice,” Jaskier whispered, closing his eyes and leaning into the touch.

Geralt shook him a bit to prevent him from falling asleep.

“You’re a brute,” Jaskier told him with a weak punch.

Geralt grew increasingly frustrated with the fasteners of the bard’s jacket, as he tried to keep him upright with one hand. He refrained from pulling on the damn thing and tearing it off, because he knew Jaskier would never let him live if he did that. Maybe he’ll even write a ballad about it.

*

“What were you thinking?” Geralt growled, as he carefully stitched the wound in the bard’s flank. It was shallow, but still bleeding sluggishly.

“I don’t really like your tone,” Jaskier started, his voice strained.

He was lying on the bed, an arm thrown over his face to block the light from the candles. He tried to swat Geralt’s hand away, but the witcher caught it before he could undo any of his work.

“Ouch. Be gentle, will you?” Jaskier whined.

He was, Geralt thought, as gentle as he would have been with Roach. But he didn’t say that, because he was pretty sure comparing the bard to his horse wouldn’t be well received by his human companion.

“Then stop squirming,” he said instead, his tone a bit too rough, even if his hands weren’t.

“It smarts,” Jaskier lamented. He looked at the small row of black stitches with a frown.

“Is your pain not exquisite anymore?” Geralt smirked furtively, as he turned to grab cloth he could use as bandages.

“Did I say that? Blood loss must have made me weak in the head for a moment.”

He hadn’t lost that much blood, but Geralt wasn’t in the mood to argue. A wound was still a wound, and the bard wasn’t supposed to get hurt like that. Smacked for talking too much, maybe, but not accidentally stabbed during a bar brawl he may or may not have started.

“Wait, where is my lute?”

Jaskier let out a strangled squeak and tried to get up. Geralt knew this was coming, and he caught him before he could fall from the bed. A push was all it took to make him lay down again.

“You grabbed it. Never let go of it. It’s there,” Geralt said calmly.

“I did? I don’t remember.” Jaskier blinked. One of his pupils was blown out, making the iris look almost black. Geralt knew it could be very bad, or it could pass over night. There was nothing more he could do, except wait and make sure he was still half coherent throughout the night.

“You hit your head,” Geralt said curtly. It wasn’t the first time they had this conversation, and it was getting old. He forced the instrument into the bard’s lap, trusting him not to rip open the stitches.

“I didn’t start the fight,” Jaskier muttered again, as if to convince himself.

“Rest,” Geralt ordered, and Jaskier closed his eyes, clutching the lute.

*

“Why did you become a bard?” Geralt asked.

He was lying on the bed next to Jaskier, his head against the wall, arms crossed and looking bored. He was having a hard time thinking about new ways of keeping Jaskier awake. It felt weird to be the one initiating the conversation, and he wasn’t used to talking that much.

“The bard life chose me,” Jaskier said, nodding. He was lying on his flank, blinking sluggishly and looking at the wall.

“Hmm.”

“Eloquent as ever,” Jaskier commented, still nodding. He frowned, as if remembering something, then he patted the bed until his fingers found the lute and gripped it.

“Why is music so important to you?” Geralt hesitated. Knowing personal information about people made him feel weird, like he was guilty of caring, and something bad was bound to happen if he did.

“History will forget me.” Jaskier said, but he didn’t sound sad. “My songs on the other hand, my songs will live on. People will keep singing long after I’m gone. They’re my legacy. My babies.”

He kept rambling for a while, trying to find synonyms and metaphors, despite his head injury making him slur his words.

“What, no sarcastic comment on how bad a singer I am, or how cliché my ballads sound?” He asked after a moment of silence.

 _You’re great_ , Geralt wanted to say, _Your songs are annoying, but you have heart_. He tried, he really did, but he tripped over the words and it came out as a grunt and a “hmm”. Typical.

“I’ll outlive you,” Geralt said, and he tried to hide the sadness in his voice, but he was pretty sure he failed, because the bard seemed at a loss for words for a while – a rare feat.

“And you’ll live on through my songs,” Jaskier mused, “Forever.”

“What was that fight about anyway?” Geralt asked. “The one you didn’t start.”

Jaskier let out a strangled laugh, and Geralt looked at him pointedly.

“Did they insult your singing?”

“Worse.”

Geralt wished he had been paying more attention to what occurred in the tavern earlier, because he couldn’t think of anything worse to criticize than the bard’s music. His sense of fashion maybe.

“You.”

“Me?”

“They kept calling you the Butcher, so I painted a pretty portrait with all their flaws. I guess they didn’t much like the sound of it.”

“Well that was incredibly stupid of you,” Geralt muttered.

But he patted him on the shoulder anyway. It sounded so silly – the bard defending his honor with a song – and yet he felt something akin to pride, stirring deep down under the leather of his armor.

“Think I could sleep now? I feel hungover, my head is still pounding, but it’s a different pounding than before. If that makes sense.”

It did, and Geralt gave him another light pat, answering without any words. _Sleep now, dream about songs and leave the fighting to me._

**Author's Note:**

> Written because of [this post](https://sarcasmcloud.tumblr.com/post/190225028931/sunflowersupremes-jaskier-i-have)


End file.
